Holness tells Caricom countries: “Ask for your invite”

Guardian TT (Source) Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness says if any Cari­com coun­try want­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to the Ja­maican-host­ed two-day vis­it by Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Michael Pom­peo, all they had to do was ask.

Hol­ness was re­spond­ing to ques­tions by re­porters dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day af­ter the two-day vis­it on whether the ex­clu­sion of cer­tain Cari­com mem­ber states was in­tend­ed to cre­ate a di­vi­sion amongst Cari­com mem­bers.

Pom­peo al­so re­spond­ed to the ques­tion, say­ing there is no in­ten­tion by the US to di­vide Cari­com mem­bers.

Cari­com Chair­man, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, an­nounced last week that she had de­clined to send a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the meet­ing, say­ing some Cari­com lead­ers were not in­vit­ed and she saw their ex­clu­sion as an at­tempt to di­vide the re­gion.

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­istry stat­ed ear­li­er this week that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sup­ports Mot­t­ley’s po­si­tion, say­ing in keep­ing with the ex­pec­ta­tion of Caribbean uni­ty, the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos speaks for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

US me­dia re­cent­ly an­nounced that Pom­peo is vis­it­ing Ger­many, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca and Ja­maica and Flori­da from Jan­u­ary 18-23. The fight against ter­ror­ism and the cri­sis in Venezuela are ex­pect­ed to dom­i­nate the Latin Amer­i­can/Caribbean trip.

The US State De­part­ment said Pom­peo will meet Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness to­day and “con­duct a mul­ti­lat­er­al round­ta­ble dis­cus­sion with Caribbean lead­ers, and de­liv­er re­marks on US Caribbean re­la­tions.”

Speak­ing dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, Hol­ness said the sov­er­eign­ty of coun­tries in the re­gion must be re­spect­ed.

“When friends asked to be host­ed, or for us to host them, we’re friends, so we do that- we are friends with the US, so we are hap­py to host here, not to the ex­clu­sion of any­one and if any­one want­ed to at­tend, they just had to sig­nal, from my per­spec­tive, we would have done every­thing to en­sure that they are present,” Hol­ness said

Pom­peo mean­while sought to give the as­sur­ance that the US was not tak­ing a di­vide-and-con­quer ap­proach to Cari­com.

“There is no in­tent from the US to di­vide CARI­COM, not yes­ter­day, not to­day, not to­mor­row, we want all the coun­tries of this re­gion to pros­per and be suc­cess­ful. We know that coun­tries in this re­gion will agree with the US in cer­tain po­si­tions from time to time and dis­agree with us from time-to-time that is true for Ja­maica as well as true for many of the folks that I will vis­it with this af­ter­noon,” Pom­peo said.

But Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Pro­fes­sor Andy Knight be­lieves the ex­clu­sion of cer­tain Cari­com na­tions to the meet­ing sig­nals just that.

“I think this is just a clear in­di­ca­tion that they are di­vid­ing the Caribbean coun­tries on pur­pose be­tween those who would be will­ing to kow­tow US for­eign pol­i­cy and those who are will­ing to re­sist US for­eign pol­i­cy and you no­tice that the ones who are re­sist­ing US pol­i­cy in the case of Venezuela are the ones that were not in­vit­ed to this meet­ing so I be­lieve this is a very bla­tant way of cre­at­ing di­vi­sion be­tween Cari­com,” Knight told Guardian Me­dia.

He said he ap­plaud­ed the de­ci­sion by Cari­com chair, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley to boy­cott the meet­ing and the sub­se­quent sup­port paid to Mot­t­ley by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley be­cause this di­vi­sive ac­tion by the US is putting Cari­com at risk.

“I think it would be dis­as­trous if some of those coun­tries don’t re­main unit­ed, Cari­com would fail as a re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion if this is al­lowed to con­tin­ue,” he said.

He said the ap­proach tak­en by Hol­ness is short­sight­ed and may just come back to haunt him.